Parables Written In Blood
by HalfshellVenus1
Summary: TBag five-part arc: His future was written at the beginning. It came to him by blood.
1. Chapter 1

Title: **Parables Written In Blood** **(Chapter 1: Genesis (T-Bag's parents))**

Author: HalfshellVenus

Characters: T-Bag, others (**Gen**)

Rating: T

Summary: _His future was written at the beginning; it came to him by blood._

Spoilers: Through end of Season 1.

Authors Notes: Written for **philosophy20**, for prompt #17, "Lack of God." This is a somewhat AU history of T-Bag. These are a series of five times T-Bag came close to dying, and who that made him in the process.

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**Part I: Genesis**

It was Winter when Myra changed.

She got picky about her food, sometimes barely eating at all. She stayed abed too long in the mornings, hardly finishing the few chores she could handle.

Myra got lazy and sullen, had to be what it was. Bedding her hadn't ever been much to go on about, but it was convenient— she was there. Small recompense for having to look after her all the time, but he was stuck with her after Mama and Daddy died. It wasn't much good now— like humping a lump of clay.

But it didn't stop him. A man had things he was _owed_.

In springtime, she started to get fat. She never was much to look at—empty features, teensy little eyes. She'd been shapeless and clumsy since she was a baby, and he knew not to expect anything more. But now there was bulging, and her dresses didn't fit. It was laziness pure and simple, and what to do with her now, he wondered?

By summertime, he knew. He never realized how lucky they'd been before. All these years, just the two of them, and it took 'til now to see the consequence of their sin.

He thought about it and thought about it. He weren't ready to raise a baby, not with the grown-up baby sister he had right now. How would he manage, never being able to trust her with it? He couldn't keep up the farm like that, being two places at once. It was hard enough on the days he set to plowing—oftentimes he'd take her and tie her up to a tree.

Neither of them would know what to do with a baby, how to care for it. And he was all strapped up by the situation they already had right now.

It festered and festered until he saw the answer.

"Two birds at once," he thought. "Two birds at once."

He mixed whiskey into her coffee, adding chocolate to hide the taste. More and more he gave her, 'til she was tipsy-- giggling like a child. He led her to the top of the stairs, turning the light on casually. And then he gave her a push—hard enough to rattle the teeth in his own head.

She banged and bounced to the bottom, sharp little cries skittering off in all directions. And then it was over and the world was quiet. She was a broken bundle at the base of the stairs.

He let his breath out, the one he'd been holding. And he turned off the light and shut the door.

He finished that bottle of whiskey that afternoon. Sat in the threadbare rocker by the kitchen stove, killing every thought of guilt or remorse with the same liquid fire that'd made Daddy crash the truck some eight years back. He watched the light change in the forest behind the fence, saw the crows gathering in the oak tree as the sun went down.

He'd do something about it tomorrow, once he'd figured out the story he'd have to tell.

Coming back from the outhouse, he thought he'd heard a noise. A soft thumping down below the floor it seemed.

A thought struck him, and he opened the cellar door, snapped the light on. Her head lifted up, eyes staring at him accusingly. And he knew he'd tempted Fate one time too many.

He'd bungled it, he knew that two days later. He made her crutches to keep from carrying her around the house—the gigantic mass of her, all helpless and limp. She was fine, near as he could tell, except for the legs. And the rest of her grew on into Fall.

The midwife came on the first Monday in September. She stayed the night, wiping the sweat off of Myra's forehead. She made cohosh and elderberry tea, singing low in her throat as the hours went on. She spared him no glances, not directly. But the bitter glare of her blame followed his back.

At sunrise, a sound woke him from his slumber in the sitting room chair. Soon he heard the squalling fuss of a baby testing out its lungs, and he knew it had started—all the trouble he'd tried to keep from coming.

It was ten minutes before the midwife brought the baby to him, all wrapped up in a pillowcase and red to the tips of its ears.

"This is your son," she stated flatly. For she knew it was his, though it never should have happened.

The baby looked at him, its eyes all bright and knowing. Like it knew something, about the world or maybe just about him.

_Spawn of the devil_, he thought, _just as sure as anything_.

And not for a minute did he admit responsibility for the situation, or who the devil in question clearly _was_.

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	2. Chapter 2

Title: **Parables Written In Blood** **(Chapter 2/5: An Eye for An Eye)**

Author: HalfshellVenus

Characters: T-Bag, others (**Gen**)

Rating: T

Summary: _His future was written at the beginning; it came to him by blood._

Spoilers: Through end of Season 1.

Authors Notes: Written for **philosophy20**, for prompt #17, "Lack of God." This is a somewhat AU history of T-Bag. These are a series of five times T-Bag came close to dying, and who that made him in the process.

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**Part II: An Eye For An Eye**

The Fourth of July picnic was always a community affair.

The whole town turned out, all the nearby farmers and people from up-river. They brought fried chicken and homegrown watermelon. The ladies outdid each other with their butter pickles and homemade pies.

The children would chase each other through the grass, the boys stealing off with their sisters' dollies, the girls running after them lungs a'holler. There was barbecue and corn-on-the-cob, and cool, sweet lemonade flowing by the pitcher.

At the picnic, every child was welcome. They laughed and ate, their sparkling eyes showing their happiness at every turn.

Teddy got so full he hardly had any room for pie. He sat on the grass under the big black oak tree watching the junebugs jump in the heated-up grass.

Jimmy had a three-colored popsicle, but Teddy couldn't bring himself to find one of his own. His stomach went from full to heavy to _aching_, and soon he was rolling on his side with the sharpness of the cramps.

"Teddy, now, what's the matter?" Mrs. Buford asked. Her straw hat blocked out the sun, stealing the daylight from his agony like an inside-out dream.

"My stomach's hurtin'," he moaned, his body breaking into a sweat.

Mrs. Buford helped him up, pulling him to the grange and the comforts of indoor plumbing. He was good and sick in there, barely a restful moment for the next hour or more. Mrs. Buford called to him, and solicited opinions from the preacher and Widow Stinson. Finally, she marched on inside and loomed over him, her face screwed up against the stench.

"You need a doctor, child," she said. "If you're finished now, I can take you."

"No—no, Ma'am," he said. "I mean, please, Mrs. Buford—I'll be all right."

"Well we can't be certain of that, Teddy," she pressed on. "You've been awful sick just now."

"Mrs… My Daddy, he'd—"

Her face softened, like she remembered that the Bagwells were both poor and regularly ill-tempered.

"I'll take you home then, directly. I'd like to be back before the fireworks start."

Teddy's heart clenched at those words. The fireworks were his favorite part of the Fourth, and he wanted them no matter how bad he felt. But he could see the look in Mrs. Buford's eyes; if he fussed, she'd go on about it to Daddy, and he'd get beaten for sure.

"Come on now, Teddy, let's go."

He followed her slowly out across the grass, clutching his stomach and stumbling as he went.

"Where're you going now, Lily?" A gaggle of church ladies gathered around.

"Theodore needs to be gotten home to bed. Poor child's been sick both top and bottom."

Teddy ducked his head and blushed. Wasn't that just like grownups, talking about the most embarrassing stuff like a person wasn't there?

"Well, what did he eat?" Mrs. Landing asked.

"Chicken and corn, and gobs of potato salad from what I saw," another voice put in.

"Not Minnie Baylor's potato salad?" said Netta Corbin. "It's been sitting in the sun since half-past ten."

"Dear Lord, that must be it." Mrs. Buford said slowly. "The boy's been suffering the wrath of food poisoning all this time."

She bundled him into the car then, driving away as the first fireworks started. Teddy turned and strained in his seat, trying to peer out the window behind him. The sky lifted and broke in starbursts and streamers, and the night fell back to stillness between each volley. He was enraptured with the sight, with the way the air lit up and shimmered with colors that came and went. He ached with the longing to be under that beautiful, violent, sky. It would be a whole year before it came again, and he'd missed it for no good reason at all.

The next morning, he was worthless until almost eleven. He dragged himself through his chores, barely making it the next few days.

But by Wednesday, he had recovered his body and spirit. The day soon found him in the root cellar with his Daddy's biggest knife.

He sat down there all afternoon, knowing how much trouble he'd be in when Mama found out.

Surrounded by potatoes, half of them stabbed into or cut up in ragged chunks, he surveyed the fruits of his labor strewn about the floor like fallen soldiers, headless and forgotten.

He was no longer at the mercy of a common and traitorous vegetable.

Instead, he was master of this brutalized kingdom. He would have his pitiless measure of revenge.

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	3. Chapter 3: Judges

Title: **Parables Written In Blood** **(Chapter 3/5: Judges)**

Author: HalfshellVenus

Characters: T-Bag, others (**Gen**)

Rating: T

Summary: _His future was written at the beginning; it came to him by blood._

Spoilers: Through end of Season 1.

Warning: Non-con and graphic violence, this chapter only.

Authors Notes: _This is a revised chapter of the original story, reworked for to shift the rating down from R to PG-13._ Written for **philosophy20**, for prompt #17, "Lack of God." This is a somewhat AU history of T-Bag. These are a series of five times T-Bag came close to dying, and who that made him in the process.

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**Part III: Judges **

Macon, Georgia was a whole new world to a country boy from Alabama.

Teddy had been invited along on a trip with Aunt Beryl for the weekend. "He needs to get out in the world, after all," she'd said. "He ought to get a feeling for what he's missing, before he's all grown up and has to decide where he wants to be."

Aunt Beryl had no idea what-all young Teddy actually knew, but it was better that way. If she was willing to forget his stints in juvenile lockup, then he was happy to help her along.

Here in the city might be exactly the kind of place that suited Teddy. He felt a little conspicuous, with his best hand-me-down clothes and all, but a boy could get used to the energy of the city life. The streets were buzzing with people and cars, and he'd seen three movie theatres on the drive in from the outskirtsalone. His own two-café main-street little town was rather puny in comparison to this. And heaven knew it was as boring as watching dust sift over pavement in the wind.

Aunt Beryl had left him to stroll around the city center while she went shopping. "Something fancy to wear to weddings," she'd said. "My other dresses aren't the least bit fashionable anymore."

Teddy walked down sidewalks crowded by stores and coffee shops, people wandering every which way and hardly noticing him at all.

A boy could get lost in a town this size. Become anonymous, disappear if he had a mind to. There were times he'd have liked to drop right out of his own rundown miserable life. Escape the past, escape his record and reputation; become invisible and be free to do as he pleased.

This block featured jewelry shops and an art gallery, and an athletic store beckoned across the way. The display of so many clean, new baseball jerseys and basketballs drew him over. He marveled at the quantity of them, at the other things like skis that were hanging on the inside wall.

A boy came out of the doorway, stepping confidently onto the sidewalk. He was bigger than Teddy and a little older, perhaps 20 or so. He was handsome, blond-haired with startling green eyes. And the look he gave Teddy was something slow and familiar that crept on down inside of him and made it hard to breathe.

Teddy smiled back at him with calculated charm, already keyed-up by the interest revealed in that gaze. _This_ was a little piece of something that didn't come quite so easily in his preacher-and-purity hometown. The boy regarded him with increasing heat, and before Teddy knew it the two of them were headed off to the boy's car.

Robert, his name was, though it didn't matter. This was less about _who_ than about _what _for both of them now. They drove about ten blocks to a park filled with fountains and bushes and trees. Robert's hand would stroke up the inside of Teddy's thigh, and Teddy's breath would catch in his throat while he hoped and waited for that touch to become _more_.

Robert parked near a clump of bushes, and Teddy followed him onto a walkway where they ambled casually before disappearing out of sight.

Hidden from view, they came together roughly-- mouths clashing in desperation and need. It was so much better than the embarrassed groping Teddy had gone through with other boys before. He and Robert clutched each other, hands reaching for hardness, softness, skin. There was no looking away, no pretending that it wasn't happening the way the other boys had done. And no mama to go crying home to, like so many of the girls did after sweet-soft kisses turned to tears.

A crashing of leaves and bushes behind him startled Teddy, and he broke off to see what the commotion was. A bulky, angry-looking man plunged in toward him. When Teddy turned to run, he saw that Robert had already gone.

"Faggot kids!" the man said viciously. He punched Teddy in the face and in the gut, shoving him down and climbing on top of him. Quick fingers opened Teddy's pants and yanked them off, and then the man flipped him over and muscled in from underneath.

The pain was torturous, like white-hot fire. Teddy yelled hoarsely, and found an arm hooked around the front of his throat while the man took him from behind.

Tighter and tighter that arm kept squeezing. Teddy strained for air as the world blackened at the edges. Only the agony of brutalized sensation kept him from passing out.

"Gonna go out with a bang, you cocksucking trash."

And then the anger rose up inside Teddy like a demon set free upon the earth. He was not about to die at the hands of this stranger, this monster raping him and pretending he was saving the world from the very thing he was himself

Teddy waited, straining against unconsciousness and listening for his chance.

The man groaned weakly not seconds later, and Teddy bucked and rolled the two of them over until he was free and the man lay bewildered on the ground beside him.

Teddy's hands scrabbled across the ground, finding a rock that was the size of his palm.

"Take that, you sonofabitch!" He brought the rock down hard against the man's eye.

Strangled screams echoed in Teddy's ears as he kept on striking, and the rock turned red.

The sounds stopped long before Teddy ceased his attack, unnoticed beneath the buzzing that swarmed inside his head. All he heard when the noise died down was his own ragged breathing against the background of distant traffic.

The man lay there, still and broken. His hair lifted lightly in the wind that alone moved in the deadly quiet there under the trees. Teddy's surroundings crept back in hazily. He hardly noticed them, for the liquid flow of life seeping out to stain the dirt.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, looking at what he'd done. It would have been _him_ lying there instead now, if the man had gotten his way.

He ought to have felt sickness or regret, but no such color of emotion touched him. His fear was gone, replaced by a steely resolve that twined through the deadness of his adolescent heart. The only tragedy here was to his own battered flesh, its testimony in the wetness that stained his fingers in a trail of crimson tears.

He examined this bright red essence of himself, glistening in the sunlight with the richness of pure vitality. He was empowered by its beauty, by its existence in the face of so narrow an escape.

His blood was the foundation of his own survival, superior in its strength and sustenance. It was the heart of what made him who he was and would become, a most astonishing and resilient young man.

But _this_ man was nothing like him. Truth be told, this man deserved no mourning—he was nothing much at all.

The certainty came to Teddy then, as he looked upon the remnants of his desperate rage.

The blood of other people was purely ordinary.

And when he spilled it as he pleased, they would not miss it.

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	4. Chapter 4: In The Valley Of The Shadow

Title: **Parables Written In Blood** **(Chapter 4/5: In The Valley Of The Shadow)**

Author: HalfshellVenus

Characters: T-Bag, others (**Gen**)

Rating: T

Summary: _His future was written at the beginning; it came to him by blood._

Spoilers: Through end of Season 1.

Authors Notes: Written for **philosophy20**, for prompt #17, "Lack of God." This is a somewhat AU history of T-Bag. These are a series of five times T-Bag came close to dying, and who that made him in the process.

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**Part IV: In The Valley Of The Shadow **

At Fox River he became T-Bag instead of Teddy. And he was the cock of the walk in that vicious break-and-shank world.

At most prisons, the pedophiles and child-killers were the lowest form of life. A man didn't live long with those crimes in his past. But T-Bag was no ordinary man. He had taken steps to strengthen his chances at survival.

Divide and conquer, so the notion went. Refocus the hate onto someone else, and you could move that target off your back.

Fox River already had a White Supremacy faction, but its leader was weak. Theodore Bagwell, however, was a _very_ persuasive speaker—smooth when he needed to be, and menacing in the softest of voices. He was tightly-controlled and watchful as hell, and people learned to stay on his good side lest they find themselves leaving their blood on the floor.

Surrounded by lifers looking for violence, T-Bag convinced his men that simply hating wasn't enough. Ridding the world of their inferiors at every opportunity was a necessary mission.

Soon there was an upswing in killings at the prison, including the leaders of the White Supremacists and of the Black Power gang. Those two murders looked to all the world like a showdown between opposing forces, but that of course was by design. T-Bag was a master at pinning the blame on someone else, or at getting others to do his dirty work for him.

There ought to have been a rebellion against him, a movement in the dark that left him lifeless with a knife in his side.

But instead, T-Bag rose through the inmate hierarchy, gathering influence and power as he went. There might have been those that thought about taking him down, but the people that tried to do it usually ended up dead.

Ibrahim Sahmalid had been the first, so much smarter than T-Bag had given him credit for. Sahmalid had seemed to know who was behind that mutual murder tableau almost from the beginning. But he'd been stupid enough to try a shank convention in the laundry room—as if T-Bag didn't always have his posse looking out for him. The Black Power gang left T-Bag alone after that. Two leaders dead inside a month was more trouble than it was worth.

Rocky Paxton hadn't cared for T-Bag's hand on his knee in the lunchroom, and he'd made the mistake of thinking T-Bag's size had anything at all to do with his will to survive. The fork through Paxton's windpipe would have proved him wrong, if he'd still been paying attention. T-Bag's reputation wasn't built on fantasy—he was deadlier than anyone in that cesspool of dangerous men.

There'd been others over the years—Landry Smalls, Jimmy Wharton, LuWon Demaris, Sledge McCain. He'd seen the look in each of their eyes, as they realized how badly they'd underestimated what he could do.

But none of them came closer than John Abruzzi, walking in on the beating he'd arranged for T-Bag in that suddenly empty room. It seemed only seconds before Abruzzi was clenching him by the throat and talking about Jesus while he brandished that knife.

T-Bag could taste the fear in his own mouth, could see the future of this encounter like it had already happened. It was a done deal, the blade's point gathering blood along his neck while Abruzzi crooned like a lover and prepared to send him off to Hell himself.

But Abruzzi forgot about T-Bag's other weapon, that deceptive and beguiling tongue. T-Bag worked a transformation, a "Come to Jesus" moment right there on the brink of death.

Abruzzi reached for the Grace that T-Bag dangled before him, God's visitations still fresh in his mind. He didn't notice that the words were spoken by a sociopath, rendered moot before they fell.

He never saw the razor T-Bag had hidden in his mouth, not even when it sliced across his neck.

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	5. Chapter 5: Vengeance Is Mine

Title: **Parables Written In Blood** **(Chapter 5/5: Vengeance Is Mine)**

Author: HalfshellVenus

Characters: T-Bag, others (**Gen**)

Rating: T

Summary: _His future was written at the beginning; it came to him by blood._

Spoilers: Through end of Season 1.

Authors Notes: Written for **philosophy20**, for prompt #17, "Lack of God." This is a somewhat AU history of T-Bag. These are a series of five times T-Bag came close to dying, and who that made him in the process.

x-x-x-x-x

**Part V: Vengeance Is Mine**

Threats were the coin of survival in T-Bag's world, threats and people knowing he'd follow through should they disregard his will.

He had schemes to keep himself on board that escape team, unwanted and unwelcome as he was. Mr. Scofield would leave him high and dry if he had the opportunity; T-Bag made sure he knew that a plan was of no value if the guards knew what you were doing.

Everyone knew there were too many people involved for the escape to work out. It was a matter of numbers, the numbers being one less than those expecting to leave. He'd tried getting Westmoreland to drop out, and darned if the old man wasn't more stubborn than he'd given him credit for. If not Westmoreland, well, that little jive-boy punk then. He'd given insult and had no respect for the hierarchy of doing things—and that kind of attitude did not sit well with T-Bag. If it came down to necessity, T-Bag had his plan, and the boy just might not make it to the last part of the journey.

Now, T-bag had thought for awhile that things were taken care of, once John Abruzzi was gone. But the man didn't _stay_ gone—he came back all scarred and scary, his eyes on T-Bag like payback was coming due. They'd had a kind of tenuous treaty between them before— an unspoken pact wrought by mutual menace and their positions of power. That treaty had ended when Abruzzi came after T-Bag, and the prey had turned hunter in a shocking twist of events that seemed to guarantee Abruzzi's demise.

There was no predicting what happened afterward-- that should have been the end of it. But T-Bag's "permanent solution" did not stay permanent.

Now, Abruzzi was back.

T-Bag did his level best to avoid the man then, stretching out that separation as long as he could. But it didn't last, and finally Abruzzi approached him to speak-- T-Bag watching carefully all the while for any nuance or sudden move. Abruzzi talked of moving on, of forgiveness and cooperation toward the larger goal they had in common. T-Bag listened, ever-vigilant, to all those reasonable words and ideas. But there was something under the surface that kept him wary, a feeling like revenge was only a few short, secret steps away.

The Pretty's plan moved forward and suddenly they were leaving, despite nothing really feeling quite prepared. They'd moved up the escape date and Burrows was in the SHU now, but still they were leaving and things were magically clicking along. All of them were nervous, half-expecting to be caught, but somehow Scofield kept slipping past risks like suggestive language flying over the heads of little children.

The Infimary. In and out tunnels and above-ground and down again, and now they were here and Burrows was waiting. Scofield had probably planned that too, though T-Bag didn't see how.

His chance arrived unannounced, as it often did. One moment Burrows was handcuffed to a chair, and the next he was free. Dangling behind, unnoticed by the others, was the safeguard T-Bag needed to render himself indispensible.

It went exactly as he'd predicted, and it didn't take long. One minute they were climbing into a van, and then next Abruzzi was pulling out a gun. A quick flick of the wrist, and T-Bag had bought himself an extended ticket on the escape train, wedding himself to Scofield's future. The others could no more kill him than jettison Scofield; he had a place and it was there by Scofield's side.

He should have known it would be Abruzzi that would unravel his hopes. Not Scofield or his hulking brother, though both of them were frustrated at the way he slowed them down.

No, it was John Abruzzi. A man who didn't flinch when dark deeds were on the table, who knew that expediency beat out elegance when the chips were down.

Abruzzi saw his solution in the corner of a dusty old barn, and with one sharp blow he severed the connection T-Bag had to Scofield. The others were free then, running out the door and leaving T-Bag to meet his fate alone.

He was expendable now, the way he'd maneuvered to avoid, but he wasn't beaten. _Nothing_ would beat him while he still drew breath.

T-Bag gathered up his hand, bound his wrist as best he could, and tried to follow on. The others were up there far ahead of him, but he wasn't giving up.

Stealing along behind them, through a forest that none of them knew, he trailed them from the shadows, waiting to see what happened. He would use it, whatever it was.

Leaning against a tree-trunk, he watched the helicopter searchlights sweep across the ground.

He was a little light-headed, the scent of iron in his nose, but he was not defeated. He had the will to keep going, and he would cling to this gritty existence or die in the attempt.

The cloth covering his wrist was sodden and sticky, but he paid no heed. This could be his end or his salvation, this chance at freedom. It was worth this brutal cost.

The elixir left in his veins would be enough to sustain him. Where others might panic, he had faith in himself, in his uncanny ability to endure.

The blood of other people was purely ordinary, watered-downand weak.

But his own was a potent serum of survival.

It would give him the strength he needed to see the next morning come.

_--------- fin ---------_


End file.
